A Wallflower’s Guide to Viscounts and Vice by Manda Collins - Book Review

Series: A Wallflower’s Guide #1

Publication Date: 22nd April 2025 

Genre: Victorian Romantic Mystery 

3.2 Stars 

One Liner: Fast-paced and light 

1876

Wealthy Lucy Penhollow is a wallflower by choice. She would rather spend time with her friends and read about grisly murders than make small talk with the gentlemen. However, when Lucy and her best friend’s brother witness a criminal act, she is determined to use her amateur sleuthing skills. After all, the kidnapped woman is also a friend!

Viscount William Gilford finally realizes that his decision to escape the grief of his father’s murder left his family estate in losses. He has to rectify the issue fast. Marrying an heiress sounds like a good plan. However, his sister’s friend is strictly off-limits, no matter how quickly he seems to fall for her. 

With a killer on the hunt, the couple has to fight for their lives before they can fight for their love! 

The story comes in Lucy and William’s third-person POVs. 

My Thoughts: 

While this is the first book in a new series, it has characters from the previous series, Ladies Most Scandalous. I haven’t read those books, but something about the way the characters were introduced hints at their prior existence in the fictional world. A quick search confirmed the same. Though this is a standalone, I wondered if I missed any details. 

The book tries to balance romance and mystery. It’s predominantly a light-hearted book (you can guess from the cover), so everything is pretty surface-level. Not a bad thing, IMO, since it works as a great palate cleanser or a breather between heavy reads. 

For a 320-page book, it has a terrific page. The narration just keeps going. While I saved a day thanks to this, I also couldn’t linger on any cute moments. The connection between the main characters or their chemistry, the new developments in the case, and the drama; everything happens quickly, maybe too quickly. 

There’s some spice and an open-door scene, but like the rest, this, too, has a fast pace. In a way, it works since lingering on details here would have been odd. But this is also a lost opportunity to deepen the connection between the leads. 

The mystery is decent and has a few twists and red herrings. I could guess what it possibly could be and was right to an extent. There’s some death and danger, but nothing too bad. 

There’s a short epilogue as well. We have a couple of potential couples, so likely that the next book will have one of them as the lead pair. 

To summarize, A Wallflower’s Guide to Viscounts and Vice is a lighthearted and quick read with some dangers and romance. Though nothing stands out, it does entertain to an extent. 

Thank you, NetGalley, and Forever (Grand Central Publishing), for eARC. 

#NetGalley #AWallflowersGuideToViscountsAndVice